As a result of the GDPR and privacy protection laws in Europe, most commercial websites in the US now have a popup that says something like “We use cookies to track you. Click OK”.
The better websites offer an option to opt out of cookies. Many of them do not. It’s click OK or go f*** yourself.
Sometimes I click OK. Sometimes I simply go away and decide not to use the site at all.
This is a prime example of how the government “fixes” technology.
Our lawmakers (at all levels and in all roles) are such morons that counting on them to address actual technological societal issues is a fool’s errand.
Are there problems with big tech? Absolutely. Social media, monopolies, stoking political differences, bots, false advertising, infotainment as news, privacy issues, hacking, and the like are all issues.
But if you think for one second that Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell or any of the hundreds of state and local politicians have a clue when it comes to developing meaningful solutions to these problems, you’re smoking crack.
Doing the Dotcom boom, I worked for a local ISP. I remember attending a City Council hearing in Pittsburgh where the council was taking public comment on giving an exclusive monopoly to AT&T to provide high speed internet service in the city.
We competed with AT&T.
I had prepared a thoughtful argument against this. I spoke about our company, which was a thriving small business that had grown from 35 to 500 employees. I talked about how we promoted from within. I talked about our prices being lower and offering an alternative to big AT&T. I talked about the “blue ribbon” ceremony the mayor attended when we moved into the crappy warehouse district and began the revitalization of the area.
I was passionate. I spoke my piece to the council members who uniformly ignored me, read papers on their desk and yawned.
AT&T sent professional speakers and lawyers who took up all of the rest of the speaking spots. They packed the room with a 100 AT&T badge wearing employees too.
I knew as soon as I sat down that we were screwed.
It turns out that I was right, not just for Pittsburgh but for the entire country.
Within 5 years, almost every independent ISP was out of business. Today, 23 years later, most people in the US havens choice for Internet at our homes.
The choice is usually AT&T, Verizon or Comcast (and occasionally a local monopoly cable company).
If you are really lucky you might get to choose between two of these providers.
All of them suck. All of them offer bait and switch contracts that lock you you into service that increases in cost over cost. All of them have horrible customer support. All of them are notorious for outsourcing customer service to overseas call center and outsourcing onsite service to the lowest bidding independent contractor.
That’s just how monopolies work.
I expect the same type of government solutions to the problems of big tech that the government had delivered into past.
In other words, nothing that’s effective.
So what do I do?
I opt out as much as possible.
I try to find startups that offer a competitive service and patronize them until they gain enough traction that the monopoly either buys them or crushes them.
When I cannot do either, I hold my nose and make the best deal I can with the monopoly. And when they don’t deliver, I make it as painful as possible for them until they make things right. I do this by documenting every support interaction. I’ll sign them in reviews. I’ll even activate a temporary twitter account to complain because sometimes that’s necessary.
Although it probably does not read like this, I’m not even complaining. This is the world we live in.
I just like to look at it without blinders.